Editor’s Note: This letter is from me for the readers of DoubleSpeak. So far I have only written letters to talk about how DoubleSpeak has come this far. This time I thought I will do something else.
Dear readers
It is neither easy nor fair to write a review of a book of poem. Poetry, like classical music or an abstract painting holds the highest place in halcyon of art-forms. Words used in meters or carefully out of them, woven with images alongside abstraction of layered feelings, creating music in rhythmic syllables, colouring shapes that ooze and encroach each other’s spaces – all of these make a collection of poem dear to the readers and the endearment is different for different readers. And yet we seem to share our joy of reading them, telling each other why one should buy a book of poetry by a poet, famous or newly found, and why we should celebrate those mosaic of paisleys created with words. To do the same I am writing a short review of Bhumika R’s collection of poems – The Language of Unhealed Wounds.
The Language of Unhealed Wounds,' is a poignant exploration of the human experience through the lens of somewhat resilient emotion. In this earnestly crafted book, the poet takes readers on a solemn and meditative journey through the intricacies of enduring memories, clingy details, and the very craft of poetry that arises from acknowledging and expressing one's strengths, snippets of life and even vulnerabilities.
The entire collection is divided into three parts and walking through them would make a reader feel like moving through a photograph. If we can imagine ourselves fortunate enough to walk through a photograph which is moment framed in time, we might get more time to look at the tiniest detail that frame is giving us. Bhumika’s poems might have such an effect on an immersed reader. In that journey we might see words or collection of them as something that is felt by our taste buds. We can also see them as a rubble of things that we have gathered in our minds over the years of moving on. While moving through that rubble, she also carefully uses the craftsmanship of alliteration, allegory and even speculative metaphors. This is where her poems succeed in their forms.
Her poems talk about things, about people and about both while often making us wonder when a thing becomes a person and a person appears thingly. This blur is masterfully juxtaposed with her detailed description of the spaces and times those words inhabit. Almost throughout the collection poems one can sense a humming tune of melancholy that continues in the readers’ heads even after the book ends. This I think is an excellent attribute for any book of poetry.
A poem like ‘The Tale of Coexistence’ is a wonderful painting of endurance, acceptance and to some extent denial. It appears soft in its form but the images hit hard somewhere. There are number of poems where old memories, that could have been haunting otherwise, were presented with an apparent indifferent affection. Again that melancholy (but not sentimental) tune can be heard as one read through those poems.
Bhumika’s wounds are not just the ones that are embedded in personal memories but also can be seen in the poem about the infamous Hathras rape incident. Simple verses, ringing words and yet the pain and horror of that almost irrevocable assault seem palpably visible on the pages of the book. She weaves those simple words again in another poem NH-44 to show us how we cannot but share the agony and pain of a larger unfortunate mass of people. She somehow speaks for all of us and yet in her own individual spirit.
As I said at the beginning, it is unfair to give a review of a book of poems in such a small and somewhat peripheral essay and yet I would want to recommend this lovely book to all my readers. It’s a lovely small book to keep, to read again and again, to understand how we live between a thin brook that divides the zones of healed and the unhealed.
Arpan Krishna Deb
Founder and Managing Editor, DoubleSpeak Magazine
DoubleSpeak 